Chapter 8 - Blood and Bloodlines
Victor Costa took two slow steps forward, his hands clasped behind his back. Up close, Clara could see the terrifying resemblance—the sharp slope of the jawline, the intense, unblinking dark eyes that looked as though they could dissect a person's soul in a single glance.
"You have your mother's eyes, Clara," Victor said softly, stopping ten feet away. "Though you inherited your father's stubborn streak. Running off to hide in Queens with a coward who couldn't protect his own ledger."
"My father protected me from you," Clara shot back, her voice echoing off the high marble ceilings. "He gave up everything—his empire, his wealth, his name—just so I could grow up without ever knowing monsters like you existed."
Victor’s smile didn't reach his eyes. It was a cold, brittle thing. "Monsters? My dear girl, I built the very world you walk in. And this man standing beside you?" Victor gestured with a dismissive flick of his wrist toward Dominic. "He didn't marry you out of love. He married you because he knew my bloodline was the only thing standing between his family and total financial ruin."
Dominic stepped forward, placing himself slightly in front of Clara. The air in the room dropped to freezing.
"Watch your tongue, Victor," Dominic warned, his voice dangerously quiet. "You invited us into your house to talk, not to listen to your fairy tales. State your terms or watch your estate burn to ash before sunrise."
Victor let out a low, gravelly chuckle. He didn't look intimidated; if anything, he looked amused. "My terms are simple, Dominic. The Rossi shipping routes through the East River. Sign them over to my syndicate by midnight, and I'll let your little bride walk out of here alive. Refuse, and we finish what we started twenty-two years ago."
Clara’s heart pounded against her ribs. The shipping routes. This entire elaborate scheme—tracking her down, leaking the DNA results, staging the Hamptons invitation—was nothing more than an extortion plot wrapped in family history.
She looked up at Dominic, waiting for him to hesitate, waiting for the billionaire capitalist to weigh her life against his empire's bottom line.
Dominic didn't even blink.
"No," Dominic said instantly.
Victor’s smile vanished. "You're willing to sacrifice your wife for shipping lanes?"
"I'm not sacrificing anything," Dominic replied, his voice dropping into a lethal, steady register. "Because you assume you hold all the cards, Victor. You assume my security team is waiting outside the gates."
Victor's brow furrowed slightly. "What are you talking about?"
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Dominic raised his left hand, tapping the face of his high-end platinum watch twice.
At that exact second, the massive crystal chandelier overhead flickered once, twice, and then went completely dark. The entire estate plunged into sudden, suffocating blackness, followed instantly by the deafening roar of flash-bang grenades echoing from the perimeter walls outside.
